


After All

by madame_faust



Category: The Hobbit (2012), The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angst and Feels, Durin Family Feels, Gen, Kink Meme, Mental Health Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-18
Updated: 2013-02-18
Packaged: 2017-11-29 16:33:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/689092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madame_faust/pseuds/madame_faust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fill for a prompt on the kink meme: "During childhood, Fíli and Kíli ask about their grandfather, Thorin's father. Thorin tells them tales about what a fine king he was.</p><p>When the brother are older, a similar conversation starts, but this time, for some reason, Thorin decides to tell the truth."</p>
            </blockquote>





	After All

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I own nothing and am making no profit from this story. Read the original prompt and fill here: http://hobbit-kink.livejournal.com/4373.html?thread=8813845#t8813845 The title comes from the Dar Williams song, "After All," which I quote throughout the story. (And apologies for the funky formatting, this one is slightly oddly written, but I didn't think each section should be its own chapter.) This is yet another exploration of Bad Daddy!Thráin, I promise I will someday write a story about the poor guy before he got all messed up.

Thorin Oakenshield was as steadfast as any dwarf who ever lived. He was loyal, fierce and hard-working and loved his family more than his own life. One thing he was not, generally, was a liar. Lying did not come naturally to Dwarves and those who could spin falsehoods as easy as breathing were often compared unfavorably to dragons. Under most circumstances Thorin preferred to keep silent rather than speak untruths, which was why, when his sister-sons began to ask questions about his own childhood, he did not answer them, at first.  
  
“What was your Da like?” Fíli asked out of the blue one evening, standing on a stool to help his mother cut potatoes for the meal. She was peeling the skins off in one long ribbon and he was (very) carefully slicing the clean, skinned potatoes into chunks.  
  
Dís and Thorin locked eyes over the cutting board and as one decided to say nothing. “Mind your fingers,” his sister said briskly, laying her hands over her son’s smaller ones to curl his knuckles away from the blade. “No chatter while you’re cutting, there’s a good lad.”  
  
“But what was he like?” Fíli persisted.  
  
“He was tall, had a dark beard and blue eyes,” his mother replied impatiently.  
  
Her son’s face lit up and he smiled sweetly as he asked, “Like Uncle Thorin?”  
  
The muscles in Thorin’s forearms went very rigid and his hands stilled over the meat he’d been carving for stew.  
  
“No,” Dís shook her head immediately. “Not at all like your uncle.” _  
_

 

  
_Go ahead, push your luck,_  
 _Find out how much love the world can hold_  
 _Once upon a time, I had control_  
 _And reined my soul in tight._

Thráin was useless with very young children. He preferred to leave their minding to his wife or, when he had time for it, his own father who adored the little dwarflings who would tangle their sticky hands in his beard and drool on his velvet coat. The prince of the realm was unusual in his aversion to infants, most of their kind cherished the youngest of their race and it was not unusual for strangers to stop a young mother in the street to smile at a child or inquire about its age or compliment how handsome it was. Expectant women often had hands lain upon them with blessings and well-wishes for the health of the babe and mother.  
  
There was nothing offensive about infants in and of themselves, he did not begrude them their existence and he was sure that in time he would come to appreciate his children. It was only that dwarflings were so...small. Thorin seemed especially fragile to him with soft, fat limbs and a tiny chest that contained a heart so delicate, he could not fathom how they kept a body alive at all. He was a broad, stout dwarf with hands that could so easily crush the child's little skull if he was not careful. And so he was careful, handling the babe as if he were glass-blown and only when there was no opportunity to avoid contact.

Upon the birth of his eldest son and heir, before he even held the child in his arms, his father gifted him with a ring. An ancient heirloom, passed down their line since the time before the Dark Days when evil held sway over the land.  
  
“I give this to you to ensure the continued might of our people,” he said, hesitating only slightly before he handed the ring over. It seemed heavier than its size indicated.  
  
Might, yes. Strength. And were infants strong? No, they were helpless. Weak. And until they had some muscle on their bodies, could stand of their own accord, there was precious little Thráin could do with them.

* * *

A few days following his question before dinner, Fíli asked his uncle again about his father as Thorin brushed and braided the child’s hair for the day. “Did your Da braid your hair when you was little?”  
  
Thorin’s movements never faltered, so accustomed was he to the motions, but he could not find his voice. Had his father braided his hair when he was young? At first, it was difficult to remember _being_ Fíli’s age. Sometimes it seemed to Thorin that he’d been born two-hundred years old and grey of beard, even though he was not yet one-hundred and fifty.  
  
“Sometimes,” he replied. It could not be a lie for _surely_ his father had done so. At least once. Even if Thorin had forgotten.

 

 

_Well, the whole truth_  
 _Is like the story of a wave, unfurled._  
 _But I held the evil of the world_  
 _So I stopped the tide,_  
 _Froze it up from inside._

“Hold still, you little eel!” Thráin struck his eldest son on the head with the flat side of the brush, a gesture performed by a hundred dwarrow parents daily on squirming children in their private chambers within the Lonely Mountain.  
  
“Ouch!” Thorin protested, batting his father’s fingers away.  
  
“That didn’t hurt one bit, youngling,” his father muttered. “If your mother was here, she’d box your ears and give you something to complain about.” To his simultaneous joy and exasperation, Freya was entirely preoccupied with his newborn son, Frerin, leaving Thorin in his father’s less than capable hands. “Don’t know how you did this to yourself. What were you and Dwalin doing, rolling in thistles?”  
  
Thorin mistook his father’s grumbling for genuine interest in how he passed his day. The dwarfling, with eager blue eyes, twisted around to tell his father all about rambling in the hills with his cousin and the stag they’d seen before their clumsy stumbling caused it to take notice of them and bolt.  
  
It was not long before Thráin’s mind began to wander; there was nothing interesting or unusual about a ten-point stag in the glen, their most recent hunting party took down a fourteen-point stag at the border of Mirkwood. There was a complaint from the weed-eaters about killing for sport, but they made good use of the creature, bones to hide. He had to meet with a representative of that race for his father was...indisposed at the time.  
  
An unexpected spark of anger lit within the prince. For what reason should he be here, in his private chambers, tending to his son? They had dwarves enough about the place to do such things for him, listening to the prating of children was the purview of a nursemaid, not a prince.  
  
“Ada? Are you listening?”  
  
“Hold your tongue, lad,” he said harshly, throwing the brush down on in disgust. “There aren’t hours enough in the day to give heed to your foolishness.” He took the boy in his arms without affection, as though he was handling an unwanted parcel and dropped him unceremoniously in the room where his wife was rocking the baby to sleep.  
  
“Take your son,” he said curtly to his concerned wife. “He is far too troublesome for his own good.” And he shut the door before she could make inquiries of him.  
  
Thráin walked the vaulted halls of Erebor, ignoring those who would bid him good-morning. He’d wasted half the day in caring for Thorin who was old enough, surely, to plait his own hair without taking up so much of his father’s attention. It was only when he saw his own father, seated upon his throne that he began to feel the faintest stirring of guilt in his heart. For the king was a good father in Thráin’s youth, in addition to being an excellent ruler. Even in his darkest moments, Thrór had a dignity and nobility his son could not emulate.

When Freya brought Thorin to visit his grandfather, Thráin looked at them with mingling longing and jealousy as the king took the lad on his lap and demanded to know all about his escapades with his cousin in detail. Thráin did not have that free and easy way with children. He did not have that free and easy way with anyone.  
  
“What did he do to cause you such vexation this morning?” his wife asked, beckoning him into a corner that they might have privacy.  
  
The prince had no adequate reply to make to her, so he remained silent.  
  
“You should reassure him,” Freya insisted. “He believes he has done something wrong to anger you.”  
  
Something soft fluttered in Thráin’s chest when he looked at his son’s animated face as he spoke to his grandfather. “I will...later,” he promised, twisting the heavy ring on his finger, as was a habit of his. “Before he goes to sleep tonight.”  
  
But matters of state kept Thráin well away from his chambers until the moon was high in the sky over the mountain. He eased open the door to his son’s room, but Thorin was fast asleep, tangled in his sheets. Not wishing to wake him from sound slumber, Thráin eased the door closed on silent hinges and never said a word about the matter.

* * *

Soon enough, Kíli began peppering him with his own questions. Thorin supposed he should not be surprised, his sister-sons were like thunder and lightning; where one came, the other was sure to follow. “Why doesn’t he live along of us?” he asked one day, riding on his uncle’s shoulders home from the market.  
  
“Why doesn’t who live with us?”  
  
“Your Da. Gimli’s grandfather lives along of them.” And so he did. Vigg, a distinguished warrior who now worked as the preeminent butcher in the village, lived with his daughter, son-in-law and grandson, all Erebor folk, together.  
  
Thorin was quiet for so long that his nephew grew impatient and tugged at his braids, as though they were the reins of a horse. “Don’t do that,” he corrected the dwarfling, moving his hands out of his hair gently. “Your grandfather died long ago.”  
  
“How long ago?”  
  
“Before you were born.”  
  
“In the Blue Mountains? Like Grandmother?”  
  
“No,” Thorin said, taking a breath and telling his nephew the first lie that ever passed between them. “At Azanulbizar.”  
  
The child’s eyes went wide and his hands were still at last. The dwarfling heard stories of that great and terrible battle, mostly from Balin, but his mother occasionally told him of his great-grandfather, their king when the dragon came, and their Uncle Frerin. She smiled as she spoke of them, but it was strange and sad, not like her usual smile. They would have loved him, she always concluded.  
  
Mam never talked about his grandfather, though, and never said anything about whether he would have loved him or not. “Like Uncle Frerin? And Great-Grandfather? Did he die a good death?”  
  
His uncle’s eyes closed briefly, remembering. “Yes,” he said at last, gall rising in his throat. “He died nobly.”

 

 

  
_And it felt like_  
 _A winter machine that you go through_  
 _And then you catch your breath_  
 _And winter starts again._  
 _And everyone else_  
 _Is spring-bound._

Thráin had not spoken a word to anyone in days. No one knew if he ate or drank, he did not seem to mourn his father or his son. He did not do anything at all. The blood from the battle had long since dried on his skin, it made his clothes and hair brittle. He did not wash. He behaved like a man dead, but for the fact that he continued to draw breath.  
  
His only remaining son elected to speak to him. It was a responsibility he’d borne many times before, when his grandfather was unwell. Thorin knew his mother feared the gold sickness was upon her husband, she came to him at night when his sister was asleep and told him that his father might bear the title of King Under the Mountain, but he would shoulder the responsibility. Her eyes were so sorrowful that it was painful to look at her, their Queen who lost so much that was dear to her, but who never shut herself away. As ever, she would minister to her people, beginning with her children.  
  
If there was anyone Thorin would wish to emulate, it was his steadfast mother. But he himself had been near catatonic with grief for hours in the aftermath of the battle. Like his father, he went away, walking to the very edge of the killing field and staring sightlessly at the scorched ground where the pyres burned to ash. _This is where the world ends,_ he thought to himself numbly. _Nothing can else can come after this._

It was only when Dís quietly approached him that he remembered there was anyone left alive in the world at all. She did not speak to him, only took his hand in silence and lay her head on his shoulder. She had no words of comfort to give, nor did he, but it was better to grieve together than collapse beneath the weight of sorrow alone.  
  
His father’s hunched figure seemed as familiar to him as a stranger’s. His black hair, streaked with grey, was all that moved, tossed about by the wind. “Adad,” Thorin began hesitantly. He knew not what to say. They did not speak much, his father had been of a quiet disposition for as long as Thorin could remember. Even before their exile, he had little to do with his children and in the years of their wandering, the only souls who could coax him into a song or talk were his wife and father. And not even his mother could reach him now.  
  
The king raised his head and looked at Thorin with blank eyes. His son’s heart froze up in his chest. It was a looked he’d seen before, reflected in his grandfather’s face in the days before their exile. The worst days when he stood in his treasure-room, face grown white and gaunt for lack of sleep and meat, when Thorin tried to reason with him and cajole him out of that place. It broke his heart, for when his grandfather was overtaken by his sickness and he looked at him in that way. Thorin knew that although he saw him, he did not know him.  
  
“Father, _please_ , will you speak to me?” Thorin asked desperately kneeling beside him. Without thinking, one of his hands itched closer to his father’s, where that dark engraved ring, heirloom of Durin’s Folk, glinted dully in the light from the setting sun.  
  
Thráin’s expression changed to one Thorin had never seen before. It was a dark, feral look that made him seem more like a beast of the wild than a king. Without warning, his father’s hand rose and he struck his son heavily across the mouth.  
  
One of the ring’s hard corners caught Thorin’s cheek and sliced open a still-healing cut that dripped fresh, hot blood down his face. Thráin had the advantage of age and strength over his son. Thorin did not fall, but his cheek was already starting to bruise with the force of his father’s blow.  
  
As father and son stared at one another, one flooded with disbelief, the other utterly uncomprehending of the magnitude of what he’d wrought, there was a break in the cold mask Thráin wore. He looked at Thorin, bleeding from a blow suffered by his own hands, unprovoked, and he felt the faintest stirrings of horror in his chest. “My son,” he whispered.  
  
Thorin looked at his father with an expression that utterly broke Thráin’s mind: Hope.  
  
There was no hope, he recalled, despairingly. His father was dead. His younger son, Frerin, dead. Fundin, Náin, their best warriors, their youngest dwarves, who’d until this day only lifted weapons against their kin and trainers for sparring, all dead. Burned. And that _child_ of the Iron Hills, disobeyed him, the King Under the Mountain, when he wanted to enter Moria.  
  
Folly, they called it. Madness, they meant.  
  
What did they know of madness? Thráin’s mind had never been clearer. What if all their people died under the firey lash of Durin’s Bane? It would be a fitting end, for what did they have left? They escaped the fire only for so many of them to be burned this day. And his son dared to look upon him with hope. What hope did they have? Their time was ended, their Maker abandoned them to burn. If they could not reclaim Erebor, it was only right to put an end to their sorry existence in Khazad-dûm.  
  
Those would be the last words the King Under the Mountain spoke to another dwarf in living memory. For he fled the camp that night and remained lost to his family and his people forever.

* * *

Seated alone at the halfling’s dining table Thorin stared at the map the wizard had given him, his brow resting wearily on his hand. One question sounded over and over in his mind: _How_ , he wished to ask. _How did you come by this? Where did you see my father? When?_ But try as he might to give them voice, the words would not come.  
  
He was so deeply lost in thought that he failed to notice he had companions until Kíli coughed, loudly and unnecessarily, beside him. Raising his head, he looked at the lads who he loved like his own sons and saw them exchanging a meaningful glance between themselves. “What is it?” he asked, not unkindly.  
  
Fíli’s eyes slid to the map and key laid out beside one another on the table. “We were wondering...” he began, then faltered.  
  
“Yes?”  
  
“Gandalf said he...got those from your father,” Kíli asked, shifting his eyes uncomfortably. “You always said he died at Azanulbizar. With your grandfather and brother.”  
  
Thorin sighed and gestured for the brothers to sit, which they did, one on either side of him. It was time - long past time - for them to hear the truth. “So I did,” he agreed. “And...I did not lie to you, but I did not tell you the truth either.” His nephews seemed utterly confounded by his statement and Thorin did not blame them. He hardly understood himself, some days. “Your grandfather died...in spirit at Azanulbizar. It was not the battle that caused it, this death was a long time coming.”  
  
“Erm, I asked Mam once,” Fíli said, almost apologetically. “Why she never told us herself that Grandfather died a burned dwarf, since it was such an honor. She asked me who told me that and I said you did. She said she must have forgotten. I always thought that was strange.”  
  
“Aye, it’s a strange, sorry business,” his uncle agreed. “My father and I...I cannot say I knew him. I don’t think anyone did, perhaps my mother, once, but that was long ago. We were often in one another’s company, but we were not close.”  
  
“Was it...the dragon sickness?” Kíli asked, his voice dropping to a whisper at the words ‘dragon sickness.’ It was the hushed tone the superstitious used when speaking about illness; if you spoke the name too loudly, you might be the next one to catch it.

  
Thorin shook his head. “I do not know. I don’t think so, for it held sway over him even when we were at our lowest - especially when we were at our lowest. He fared poorly on the road, not in body, but in mind. He was not well, that much is clear to me now. There was a silence and a darkness about him none could penetrate.”  
  
His nephews were quiet for a long while. “What happened to him?” Fíli asked finally.  
  
“I don’t know. He disappeared. I spoke to him briefly after the battle, but he did not hear me. He did not _know_ me.” Old fear seized his heart and he remembered all too clearly the blank expression, overcome with blind rage when he reached out to take his father by the hand. He gripped his nephews' hands tightly and they did not pull away.  
  
It was one of his greatest torments, the knowledge of the threat of madness that lurked in his blood. What if, he wondered in his darkest moments, he was not suitable to be king? What if he was truly his father’s son after all? _From my grandfather to my father, this has come to me,_ he said to Balin. How much did the threads of their fates tangle with his?

“If ever I - ” he began, but his nephews interrupted him immediately.  
  
“Oh, no, uncle, _never_ ,” Kíli said, looking at him with naked trust and admiration.  
  
“I remember asking you about him once,” Fíli added. “Long ago...I remember Mam was peeling potatoes - it’s odd I recall that of all things, but never mind because I also remember what she _said_. She said you weren’t a thing like him. I remember because I thought it was so odd, I thought all dwarves should want to be like their fathers. But you aren’t. You’d never leave us.” His eyes glowed with the same love and trust as his brother’s as he emphatically repeated, “ _Never._ ”  
  
And, though Thorin did not lie to his nephews then, he did not quite tell them the truth. For the truth was, that love them with all his being as he did, he might not have a _choice_.

 

 

  
_And if I was to sleep_  
 _I knew my family had more truth to tell_.  
 _So I traveled down a whispering well  
To know myself through them._

Thráin tormentors were long gone away. How long, he could not say. It might have been hours since they left him, it might have been years. For the first time in his life, he was truly alone. No, no, not alone, for there was _something_ with him. A voice without a body that taunted him and made him forgetful.  
  
 _Your line is broken. Your people are undone. You have failed._  
  
“I have a son!” he cried out desperately, the empty halls echoing around him. Erebor was never so silent as this, forever bustling with activity. It was called the Lonely Mountain, but within there were so many dwarves, moving this way and that. His mother. His father. His wife. His children. “Children! I have children!”  
  
 _And who are they?_  
  
“They are...three. They are... They are...”  
  
Thráin, son of Thr ór, King Under the Mountain, lay his matted grey head on the dirty stone and wept bitterly. For he could not remember their names.


End file.
